"Mozilla is planning a rampage across the Open Source and Free
Software landscape--during which the Big Lizard plans to open up in
search of new friends. While you're shaking off that mental image,
further explanation may be in order. In an attempt to stimulate
applications development and resolve issues with Open Source and
Free Software contributors, mozilla.org has launched an ambitious
project aimed at relicensing as much of the Mozilla code as
possible under the GNU (GNU's Not UNIX) General Public License
(GPL)--the system under which most Free Software and Open
Source development takes place."

"A member of mozilla.org, Frank Hecker, comments on the
organization's relicensing decision. "As Mozilla gets closer to its
1.0 release, mozilla.org is seeing more and more interest from
developers using Mozilla code; in particular, there are many
people, both in the commercial world and in the Open Source world,
who have expressed interest in embedding the Gecko component of
Mozilla (the core HTML layout engine) into their applications,"
Hecker explains."

"The need for the relicensing is becoming crucial as more Open
Source and Free Software desktop and Web browser projects seek to
incorporate Mozilla's technology, Hecker says. "As an example, the
Galeon project recently released a lightweight Web browser for
Linux based on the Mozilla Gecko component," Hecker says. "Also,
the developers in the GNOME project have proposed doing
Mozilla-related development in conjunction with GNOME."